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Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Bishop of Munich and Freising and Head of the Conference of German Bishops, arrives for the opening Mass of the Bishops' Conference in Fulda, Germany, on Tuesday 25 September 2018 where the Bishops will discuss 39, a study on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Germany. (Arne Dedert / APD via AP) (Associated Press)
BERLIN – A top German bishop has apologized for thousands of sexual abuse committed inside the Catholic Church in Germany, according to a devastating report released on Tuesday that concludes that at least 3,677 people have been abused by the clergy between 1946 and 2014.
"Sexual abuse is a crime," said Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who is also head of the German Bishops' Conference. "I am ashamed for so many of us not to acknowledge what happened and not help the victims. This is also true for me.
The excuses came the same day that Pope Francis acknowledged that the scandal of sexual abuse that shook the Catholic Church drove people away. He said that the church must change its ways if it wants to keep future generations.
The report on sexual abuse in the German Catholic Church revealed that more than half of the victims were 13 years old or younger and that most were boys. Each sixth case involved rape and at least 1,670 clergy were involved. Some 969 victims of violence were altars.
On average, the abuse occurred several times over a period of at least 15 months.
The German Bishops' Conference released its report on Tuesday, but it was leaked earlier this month and has been heavily criticized for its lack of transparency and the church's refusal to let researchers access the original documents.
Instead of looking at the original church records, they sent questionnaires to the dioceses, who then provided the information.
The report was commissioned by the German Bishops' Conference and studied by experts from the universities of Giessen, Heidelberg and Mannheim.
The researchers wrote that there was evidence that some records had been tampered with or destroyed and that many cases had not been brought to justice. Sometimes, suspects of abuse – mainly priests – were simply moved to other dioceses without the congregations being informed of their past.
"The numbers are just the tip of the iceberg," said Harald Dressing, a psychiatrist from the University of Mannheim who presented the report with Marx and others in the city of Fulda , in Central Germany, at a congress of the German Episcopal Conference.
"Generally, the risk of sexual abuse on children inside the Catholic Church continues to exist," Dressing warned. He said that celibacy, clergy power and homosexuality inside the church were all problems that favored abuse.
German Justice Minister Katarina Barley said that "dioceses and religious orders must finally assume their responsibilities during decades of repression and denial … the Church must make a complaint in every case".
The Catholic Church has long been fighting against sexual abuse by its clergy.
In 2010, the German church was outraged by the scandal of sexual abuse brought about by the head of a Jesuit school in Berlin, which has made public decades of sexual abuse on high school students by the clergy . Following this, a whole wave of victims sexually abused by the clergy is expressed throughout Germany.
Church failures in the fight against sexual abuse scandals have also been in the news recently, with revelations of abuse and concealment in the United States and Chile.
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